I have been working, if you can call it working, with Windows 8 for the past two month. New company I am with were early adopters of Win 8 (BIG mistake) loss of productivity company-wide. This piece of junk is crap and I have great doubts that the 8.1 version will fix any of it.From a business perspective MS made too many changes from 7 to 8.Don't get me started on the 2012 Server version, that is a HUGE mess itself.Didn't the dickwads in Redmond do any focus groups of the business community?I think in time Microsoft will re-label Windows 8 as Windows Vista 2.

Thanks for nothing. Desktop users will still not have a functional start menu that allows for hierarchically organizing applications and documents while keeping access to them down to a few clicks. There is also no word on expanding hardware support given that there is plenty of perfectly fine hardware that Microsoft does not provide or works with vendors to create drivers for. Alternatively, Win7 driver model could be emulated.

Believe it or not I have all three; Win8, iPad, and Android touch devices. In my opinion the most intuitive, easiest to learn and easiest to use is the iPad. Second is the Android. A far and I do mean far distant third is Win8. There is no way a novice can pick up a Win8 touchscreen tablet and figure out how to use it without first taking the tutorial and not be proficient without further tutelage. Win8.1 is not going to fix this.

I think you've provided some very good example's of what's wrong with Win8 verses Win7. Please tell me why any of these needed to change from Win7 to Win8? Rearranging deck chairs on a sinking boat comes to mind.

I'd put Win8 in the abacus category. Yes I'd use the application search function in Win7 and Win8 works the same way but the WIN7 menu is indispensable to a mice and keyboard Win7 user not so with Metro. A Start button that takes you to the Win8 Metro Application panel is NOT listening to users.

Michael, I have a Surface RT I bought for portability. That said, I use the Win8 apps all of the time. I take notes in meetings, write memos, whatever I need to do. Win8 apps are a great compliment to many "real programs". When I use Office it kicks me into the desktop which I have no problem with and I do whatever I need to do. I would imagine once all of Office has received the Win8 treatment my time in the desktop will decrease even more. As a student, there is not much I can't do in the tiled mode but I will confess that for the convenience of a full-size keyboard and mouse I do use my laptop, also Win8. Again, mostly, for convenience. There are some things I still use a desktop for, coding, web design, and photo-editing come to mind, but there are some Win8 apps out there to do that, I just haven't had the time to try them out. I wonder if people would still feel the same if Adobe released a full-powered Win8 version of Photoshop?

I work with systems that require MSSQL Server and yes, a big fat tile is plastered on Metro for every stinkin' executable of which many will be used once or twice. They used to be tucked away nicely in a subfolder in the start menu, but now they are position even more prominently than Management Studio. I fail to see the benefit here. I find it utterly distracting and a loss of functionality especially since an effective system such as a menu structure already is established. There is no hierarchy when there is just one level and everything is treated the same regardless how important it is.

As InformationWeek Government readers were busy firming up their fiscal year 2015 budgets, we asked them to rate more than 30 IT initiatives in terms of importance and current leadership focus. No surprise, among more than 30 options, security is No. 1. After that, things get less predictable.